April 12, Kathleen McCormick, Museum Curator at the St. Augustine Lighthouse and Museum, walked the sand path leading to the lighthouse tower and saw a neighborhood cat playing with something. She approached, shooed the cat away and saw a short, seven-inch snakelike creature.

It was unharmed and Kathleen had a chance to get a good description before she put in the woods where it disappeared under leaf litter. Glossy pale brown, it had a dark stripe down the back and a few stripes on each side. "It looked like a skink but it didn't have legs," she said. On her own she went to the Internet and the closest she came to her find was a picture of a slow worm, from England.

After she told me of the incident we both went on searches and found that she had seen a glass lizard, a legless lizard, called slow worm in England. As children we called them glass snakes and I often found them in our Orlando backyard where I played and learned to appreciate resident wildlife. Our cat nearly always found the glass lizards first and disturbed them enough to cause them to throw their tails off to wiggle in the grass while the lizard escaped by burrowing out of sight.

My sister and I learned to watch for them and keep the cat away. The most common of the four species of glass lizards found in Florida is the Eastern Slender Glass Snake (Ophisaurus attenuatus longicaudus). More than likely, Kathleen's glass lizard was about a year old, probably born in July or August of last year. The dark stripe down the back is key to identifying the slender glass lizard.

The other most common legless lizard is the Eastern Glass Lizard, which appears in damp and dry landscapes. It lacks the dark stripe on the back, but has stripes along its sides and as an adult is the only legless lizard to have turquoise or green on its body. All glass lizards get their name from the shiny scales covering their bodies. If you observe closely enough, you'll see legless lizards have eyelids and ear openings, unlike snakes.

Snakes are also very supple and move by pushing with their enlarged stomach scales. Glass lizards can't push with their bellies, but use the scales on their sides to move, mainly in sand and through grass. On a smooth surface like an asphalt road, the glass lizard is helpless. My sister and I spent happy times helping glass lizards off our neighborhood street and driveways and into short grass where they gave thanks by quickly burrowing to safety.

These legless lizards are quite harmless and prey on just about anything they can get their mouths around, mainly insects. Crickets, grasshoppers, beetles, spiders and caterpillars are chased down and then mashed in the lizard's strong jaws before swallowing. Glass lizards grow to only 22 to 42 inches at the longest and are live long, about eight to nine years. My mother was always delighted when we found one in or near her vegetable garden.

When we did find one that was calm enough to pick up, we were always astounded to find the body quite stiff. When handled, snakes feel very smooth and supple, but legless lizards have stiff plates under their scales, making the short body feel solid and unable to coil like a snake. One absolute rule in our family: any wildlife captured was admired and released where it was found, a good rule that protected the well-being of the wild animal and probably saved my mother from being overrun with everything from crickets to wild rabbits.

To this day I have an aversion to people keeping wild animals as pets, exotic or native. Children have a possessive streak that's hard to break, but our family cultivated a love of animals in the wild and a respect for their natures that has lasted a lifetime. Fear, especially of snakes and lizards, is a terrible legacy to leave your children, even if you are tyrannized by it. Teach them to stand back, observe and admire and you've left them with pleasure and knowledge that last a lifetime.

Today, 9 to 11:30 a.m., Wildflower Meadow tours at the St. Augustine Shores Riverview Club. Take first or second entrance to the Shores, turn left onto Shores Boulevard, pass fire station on the left; take second left after fire station onto Christina. Riverview Club is on the left; park and follow sidewalk to pier; meadow is left of the sidewalk.